


the loneliest little soldier

by firstaudrina



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 21:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6627352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So tell me about Elektra," Claire says. "You know you want to."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the loneliest little soldier

**Author's Note:**

> Set in a vague alternate timeline where Claire and Matt live together and Elektra is not dead; possibly just say it’s a couple years in the future post-current angst and resurrection?

Neither of them sleep at night, so there's that.

They both know how to work through exhausted dizzy spells, they're both experts at getting bloodstains out of their clothes, they're so good at their jobs they can do them on autopilot. The difference is that Claire stitches and saves, and Matt rips everything apart. 

One or the other of them is always sneaking back into bed at odd hours, worn out, Claire mumbling crazy E.R. anecdotes for Matt to sleepily laugh at or Matt cataloguing the new ways he had been hurt, to Claire’s eternal sighing. His hands will move over her, feeling all the ways she is whole, remembering her shapes and textures, her scents and sounds. The buzzed side of her head. Her lips. She checks Matt over with a great deal more practicality, clucking her tongue when she finds a bruise that brings with it a sharp inhale, or a set of stitches that have opened up again to drool blood on the sheets they keep replacing. 

It’s good, though. It works.

 

 

Elektra shows up on the other side of four a.m., bleeding from a wound that has split her hip to knee. She staggers, barely walking, but her mouth is set. And she came here. That has meaning. 

It’s a different place than it was the last time Elektra stepped foot in it. The things Claire likes are in the fridge. Her set of dishes was better so they trashed his. An itchy blanket crocheted by Claire’s grandmother now takes up residence on the chair Matt once dozed off in listening to Elektra sleep. And of course there’s Claire herself, now standing in the doorway of their bedroom with disbelief faintly emanating from her. 

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Elektra says, or rather gasps, the sharp coppery scent of her blood ripping through the apartment. “But we have friends in common.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Claire says. “Mutual friends, I know the deal.” Matt opens his mouth to speak but Claire cuts him off before he gets a chance. “Just get my kit, okay?”

Matt listens, busying himself with the acquirement of necessary, familiar accouterments – all a lot nicer than the ones he used to use to sew his dad up – as Claire helps Elektra to the couch. "Are you like him?" Claire is asking. "Are you going to go out and rip these stiches as soon as I finish them?"

"We're not –" Matt starts, objecting.

"Probably," Elektra says at the same time. He can hear her expression in her voice, remembers the shape of that exact wry smile under his fingertips. "You're useful."

"If that's a compliment," Claire says, "It sucks."

Elektra laughs and Matt knows right then no good will come of this.

 

 

"So," Claire starts over coffee. "She's –"

"Complicated," Matt finishes. 

She sounds amused. "I didn't need you to tell me that. I've met enough of you people to know complicated when I see it."

_You people_ , almost affectionately. "Elektra's not really –" Matt doesn't know where to go with that. "She's…struggling."

Claire is silent, maybe looking at him, maybe thinking. "Everyone's complicated," she says finally. "That wasn't what I was going to ask."

Elektra is his past, and sometimes his future too. Somehow, she is never his present. 

"Did you mind?" Matt asks. "I can tell her not to come again."

Claire takes another long moment. "Let's see how it goes."

 

 

Matt and Claire most often fuck first thing in the morning, in the chunk of time between Matt getting up and Claire going back to sleep for six more hours. They wake up together and leave kisses on necks and collarbones, eyes shut, all soft hums and the sun barely up. Today they get started before either of them remembers that Elektra is asleep on the couch in one of Claire's scrub tops with her bruised ribs freshly bandaged. It takes Matt too long to distinguish one, two, three separate, singular heartbeats. He pauses. 

"She's asleep," he says.

"Shit," Claire murmurs, and laughs softly because she'd forgotten too. Then her lips trail over Matt's jawline. "Better be real quiet then."

They're not; they're not really capable of it. Matt hears the exact moment Elektra wakes up, the sudden speeding of her heart as waking adrenaline shoots through her, and he hears the exact moment she hears them, too. His mouth is between Claire's legs and her hand is in his hair, her fingertips are digging into his back. All he can taste his Claire, but he hears both of them, their pulses a sweet hum that vibrates through him. 

Claire kisses him on the mouth and goes back to sleep when they're done. Matt goes to put the coffee on, rubbing at his eyes and stretching his tired muscles. Elektra is making crepes. 

"I know you like them," she says, "After."

He can hear the teasing in her voice but he doesn't care, doesn't care.

 

 

"So tell me about her," Claire says. "You know you want to."

They're eating pasta out of the same flimsy aluminum delivery container, dripping vodka sauce everywhere and dipping oil-smeared fingers into the greasy paper bag of garlic knots. Instead of wine they have ginger ale, for no real reason except Claire was craving it – the real hip kind, ginger swirling at the bottom of the bottle. They sit at the window, air coming in warm and not entirely pleasant, but nice all the same. Matt likes this. He likes being quiet with Claire, and he never thought he'd get the chance to be quiet with Claire.

(But he can still hear every laugh and cry coming in from the surrounding city.)

"College girlfriend," he says. "First love. Master assassin. Back from the dead. You know, the usual."

"The usual," Claire mocks, knocking her knee against his. "You better not say complicated again."

Matt laughs quietly, but he falls silent after. What could he say about Elektra? "We're kindred spirits," he says finally, gives Claire his wryest grin. 

"Great," she says. "Like I need two of you."

Matt laughs again.

 

 

This time Elektra is not bruised or bleeding or half-conscious. She curls in a corner of Matt's couch in a big soft sweater and leggings, wine in her hand. Claire is at work, but Matt had texted her. Claire has become a very easy person to tell things to; maybe she always was.

"She's beautiful," Elektra says. "Which I'm sure you know."

"I don't need to be told," Matt agrees.

"Does it feel different?" Elektra wonders, then adds, "Beauty."

Matt isn't sure he's ever thought about it, not really, though he's laughed his way through many a comment from Foggy about being a magnet for beautiful people. _And here I thought like didn't attract like_ , Foggy said once. ( _Don't puff up my ego_ , Matt told him in response. _It doesn't need it_.)

"Yes and no," Matt says.

Elektra digs her toes into his thigh. "Don't equivocate, Matthew."

He smiles. "Depends on how you define beauty."

"I'm rolling my eyes," she says. 

"How do you define it?"

"Beauty?" Elektra thinks for a moment, then she says, "Red."

Matt looks at her, the shift of light and darkness that passes for vision for him, all of her yellow and black and sparking. Fire. 

"Agreed," Matt says.

 

 

Matt and Elektra are sparring or, to put it more bluntly, Elektra is kicking his ass. Keeping him sharp, as she would say, and it's true that Matt never feels sharper than when he's with Elektra. She's a knife-edge that he walks like a tightrope. He blocks a kick aimed towards his face but can't deflect the punch that hits him right below the ribcage, the fingers that find his old bruises and dig in. Matt gives her an angry, artless shove that makes Elektra laugh until another hit knocks the breath from her lungs. 

"Good," she says. "Again."

Elektra takes him down with her legs around his neck, crushing his windpipe, and she doesn't let him go right away either. His hands scrabble at her thighs and she laughs, the sound of it mean and musical. 

"Getting soft, Matthew," she says when she releases him. A pause. "Well, not _soft_."

It's Matt's turn to laugh and get mean, pulling her hair hard, catching the edge of her jaw with his knuckles. He's not sure when it turns, when fighting becomes something else – maybe because there was no turn to take, because fighting is always something else for them. He knows that her lip splits and everything smells like blood. He knows that she pins him hard to the ground. He knows that he leans up before he knows he's doing it, and he knows that Elektra laughs when she kisses him but she still does it. 

It doesn't go as far as it could. His fingers slide against Elektra, so wet, until her stuttering gasps become cries. After she comes he brings his hand to his mouth so he can suck his fingers clean. 

"Will you tell Claire?" Elektra asks.

"Claire and I, we already…" Matt gives her a little smile, sheepish and self-aware. "We're not monogamous." 

Elektra noses against his neck, her teeth sharp as she smiles. "Were you before I got here?"

"Ego," Matt says. "Ego, ego, ego."

 

 

"Is she staying?" Claire wonders.

"Forever?" Matt says. "I don't know where we'd put her, we only have a one bedroom."

"Ha ha," Claire says without a hint of mirth in it. "You should just give up the heroics, give up the practice, go out to a comedy club and start a new career. Matt Murdock, comedian."

"Foggy thinks I'm funny."

"Foggy obviously loves you more than I do."

Matt grins, hand curling absently around the base of her neck. "I could never predict what Elektra would do. Don't think I could start now."

Matt has already asked about a million cloying questions designed to ascertain just how Claire feels about this – do you want her to stay, what do you think about her, do you like her, what do you want me to do – until Claire put her hand against his lips to shush him. 

"I don't know," she says, the answer to everything at once. "But every day I'm getting better at rolling with the punches."

 

 

It turns out Claire hadn't just meant that figuratively; apparently Matt isn't the only one throwing down with Elektra on the regular. He only finds out about it when he's early to his own sparring session, arriving at the gym to discover a cacophony of familiar scents and sounds, the quick exhales of exertion and effort. 

"Better," Elektra is saying. "Of course, it'll be better when you can actually make contact when you try to hit me." The volume of her voice rises; she's directing her next statement at Matt. "Your girl knows how to handle herself."

"That's patronizing," Claire says.

"Elektra is often patronizing," Matt allows. "And Claire could always handle herself."

There are the sounds of strikes and dodges but no contact is made. "You lack precision," Elektra says. "But not power."

"I can never tell if you're complimenting me or not," Claire says.

"Part of her charm," Matt says.

"Charm's a word for it," Claire says, but then Elektra knocks the breath out of her and she's too busy fighting back to say anything else.

It feels good. Matt doesn't mention it, but he breathes in and breathes out and feels good, about all of it. 

It works.


End file.
